Healthy dogs being killed as dangerous, Battersea dogs home says

Rescue centre reveals it put down 2,815 dogs last year and that the centre is being left to 'mop up' aggressive dogs

Liberty, an English bull terrier cross, is one of many coming to Battersea dogs home, but unlike Liberty many are put down as they cannot be rehoused because they are aggressive. Photograph: David Levene

Hundreds of healthy dogs are being killed at the UK's oldest animal shelter because they are regarded as too dangerous to rehome.

The Battersea Dogs and Cats Home put down 2,815 dogs last year – a third of the total number it took in. The home said 1,931 of the dogs killed had been healthy.

The charity's director of operations, Scott Craddock, said animal rescue centres were being left to "mop up" stray aggressive dogs. "What people are doing to some of these dogs and the state they are coming in to us is completely unacceptable," he told the BBC's Panorama.

Bull breeds and bull breed crosses – many of them Staffordshire bull terriers – account for more than half of Battersea's long-term residents. The number coming into the shelter has soared from 396 in 1996 to 3,600 last year, a rise attributed to their popularity as so-called status dogs. They are prized for their aggressive looks and similarity to pit bulls, which are banned under the 1991 Dangerous Dogs Act.

Craddock said many of them had to be kept in individual kennels, cutting down space available at the shelter.

It is the first time since the mid-1990s that Battersea has released details of the number of healthy dogs destroyed.

The home does not turn away stray or unwanted dogs and rehomes or returns about 5,000 a year. But the RSPCA said the sheer volume of discarded dogs had forced it to focus instead on those at risk of cruelty.

The RSPCA's Tim Wass told the BBC it killed 533 healthy dogs last year and blamed "uncontrollable breeding, the lack of responsibility and the lack of duty of care" for the problem.